Life is long until it’s short, but in the long and short of it, it is about forgiveness. It is about redemption or redeeming those facets of life that overcome us. Forgiveness helps us overcome that which overcomes us.
Forgiveness is the essential maintenance of the spiritual life.
Throughout the seasons and meandering narratives of one’s life, forgiveness is necessary for spiritual survival, let alone to thrive—forgiveness, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness, and in health.
A better marriage partner than another human being is a relationship with God where we can and readily do let go of that which we have no control over, can never possess, and surrender all demand for.
There is a fundamental wisdom in the forgiveness
that is persistently hinted at eternally in the gospel.
Forgiveness is a gospel reality
where the gospel reveals
not only the rudiments of salvation,
but also the only viable way to live.
The gospel way to life is a
secret hidden in plain sight,
that is, to live and to love, and to
accept what cannot be changed.
In forgiveness is the wisdom of peace,
and the sustainment of joy and hope,
and the fuelling and refuelling of love.
~
UNDERSTANDING THE WISDOM OF THE HEART
Life beckons forth a truth that all prosper hearing and applying. If only we will look for it and listen, but the majority chose not to. The nature of life is the best way of living is so rarely experienced. This is because it requires honesty, integrity, humility, and selflessness, and these and other virtues don’t appear rewarding in a buy-now-pay-later world.
Nestled deep in the heart of the gospel
is the imperative to live for virtues like honesty,
integrity, humility, and selflessness.
The ‘deeper knowledge’ in gospel living
is delivered time and again
over the longer course of time.
Proverbs 4:23 tells us to “Guard your heart,” for “it is the spring from which all of life comes.” There perhaps has never been a deeper, more resonant truth. It says that spiritual maintenance is at the core of soul and self. The spiritual self IS our personal entirety. It underpins our physical self, our mental self, and our emotional self.
Perhaps it’s not a particular person that has disappointed or hurt or betrayed us. Maybe it’s the situations of life we find ourselves in, even as we struggle not to compare our lives with others’ lives—others who have been ‘more’ successful, possess ‘more’, are ‘more’ attractive in some way.
Even as we dig deeper into those disappointments, broken dreams, hurts and betrayals, we perhaps notice that what underlies these anomalies of justice are the situations themselves we found ourselves in.
The wisdom to life seems fundamental. But it is verily a treasure trove of such depths it leads us to fathomless adventures into the heart which IS life.
The heart that maintains its commitment to forgive any and all circumstances is a heart fortified against the toils and snares of a life that would tear us asunder.
The deeper knowledge bellows forth a wisdom:
injustices are only overcome through forgiveness.
~
A HEART HEALED IS WISDOM
A commitment to forgive as well as a commitment to seek to be forgiven is life because it is healing, and because it is healing, it is wisdom. Such healing is the wisdom of God that many may disparage but none can deny its power.
A heart healed—any heart—is wisdom.
Any heart healed is life for that heart
and for all other hearts in its vicinity.
The greatest gift of any life is the life
that that life can give to other lives.
A healed heart gives the gift of life to all those in its sphere of influence. The greatest of these gifts is the presence of safety received by others that they may not only coexist in the space, having refuge beyond threat, but that they would be afforded the love that each person sees themselves worthy of.
It is imprinted in us as those bearing God’s image that we are worthy of care, of respect, of recognition, and of value—immense value. The evidence of this is humanity’s need of healing whenever a soul is damaged.
Humanity’s need is of love.
Little do we realise how close
to our own grip this love is.
Love comes close and
intimately when we forgive.
Forgive and we are healed.
~
FORGIVENESS, THE WAY TO LIFE
There are no two ways about the fact that forgiveness is the way to LIFE. Though it feels a tremendous sacrifice to forgive someone or something, forgiveness gives back to the forgiver and the forgiven in such a way as everyone wins. And that is evidence of a healed heart—that it should want ALL to prosper.
No debts are held.
No debts are incurred.
No debts remain.
Freedom penetrates the bonds of bitterness,
and purges the darkness with eternal light.
Forgiveness is the way to life because it is unhindered life. A heart that clings to the hurts of past is encumbered and bonded to that which does not belong anymore.
Hearts at peace with a life however it is oriented or has occurred are healed to the extent that the forgiveness experienced is its own cogent power source.
It is obvious that there is only one way to life,
and that way is the way of peace,
and, in essence, the gospel.
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